Recommendations for establishing global collaborative networks in soil ecology

The complexity and transnational nature of environmental issues our societies are facing, and the need to build scientific capacity building in many regions of the world, require the establishment of global collaborative research networks that include a diverse representation of scientists from multiple geographical, cultural and socio-economical backgrounds. This topic is currently gaining relevance in the field of soil ecology, as awareness is increasing that recognizing, addressing, and predicting the changes that soils are facing requires global collaboration. However, the setup, management and operation of research networks imply multiple tasks and challenges that need to be carefully considered. While major issues related to the setup of such networks in ecology have already been described in the literature, here we focus on aspects that are important to make them truly global and inclusive. For doing so, we introduce a series of recommendations to successfully develop research networks that: i) explore ecological questions requiring data with a global coverage and ii) foster the participation of scientists who have been traditionally underrepresented in international research collaborations. These recommendations, which are based on our own experience, also provide practical advice to anyone aiming to initiate (or join) a global collaborative research network to the mutual benefit of all contributors.This project received support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreements no 647038 to F.T.M. and 677232 to N.E.). Further support came from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, funded by the DFG (FZT 118). F.T.M. acknowledges support from a sabbatical fellowship provided by sDiv, the synthesis center of iDiv, and from Generalitat Valenciana (CIDEGENT/2018/041). The Jena Experiment is funded by the German Research Foundation (FOR 1451; FOR 5000)